Collaborate and connect with channel partners through social media
The temptation to log in and hang out on Facebook can be enormous. Admit it: you love to read what your friends are up to during the day, and you’re usually thinking of something clever to post yourself. After all, where else can you connect with close friends, savvy colleagues, and interesting customers, vendors, and partners to share links, stories, ideas, videos, photos, and more? Yes, you can go to a block party or business lunch, but not in your pajamas (unless it’s a sleepover), and usually not on your own time or on your own schedule. Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and other social networking sites have the same addictive qualities. The trick is to harness that addiction into time that is spent collaborating and connecting with your channel partners. And it can be done.
What makes channel partnerships successful is the relationship that flourishes behind the scenes. It’s fairly easy to claim someone as a partner, make a proud announcement in a press release, place a link to that partner on your website, and then move on. That channel association is clearly in name only. You haven’t even begun to nurture a relationship that has so much potential for both partners. Social media actually makes you more accountable simply because what you post, what you say, is available for everyone to read. It’s very, very viral.
So how can you use social networking sites to collaborate and nurture your channel partnership relationships? Simply by using social media strategies and applying them directly to what is most important to your channel partners:
• Be real. You have to be. Write posts and tweet relevant and useful information that your channel partners want and need. Clever marketing language and sales pitches don’t work here, folks. You have to be transparent. We are now trading in a world where buyers are used to drilling into their facade.
• Ask questions through your posts and tweets. Get to the root of your channel partners’ key issues and concerns, then address them right there on the social media site for all to see! You’ll address your channel partners’ needs right away, instead of dancing around the problem, forcing them to find another VAR to partner with.
• Build your reputation. By offering insightful posts and interesting tidbits on trends, new products and alternative ways to solve problems, it establishes its strong platform as the Super VAR everyone wants to work with. Social media provides an outlet for building this reputation, where two channel partners tell two more prospects about your talents, and they tell two people, and so on until you amass a large following.
• Get rid of traditional forms of marketing. Your social media experience should be free from blatant self-promotion. Social networking sites are all about exchanging useful information between partners who can benefit from each other. Your channel partners will see right through you if you start peppering your posts with promotional information.
• Post often, but not too often. If you have to think too hard to create three or more insightful posts a day, chances are you really are thinking too hard. Remember, posts and exchanges should provide long-term information and benefits to channel partners. Random “chatter” will just turn off channel partners and they’ll pass you by. Post as often as your audience wants (ie, don’t be a nuisance) and only with thoughts that pique their interest.
• Offers videos, tutorials and podcasts in real time. Instead of having channel partners come to you for training, education and ideas, post podcasts, webinars, white papers and more on your social media pages or tweet links to important information, where channel partners can digest and absorb in your own time, and then respond. back to you in a community-type forum with questions and suggestions. Speaking of viral!
Social networks have an addictive nature. You need to develop a strategy and plan to harness that excitement into something powerful and productive for your channel partners. By doing so, you will find a virtual gateway to incredible collaboration and communications that will only benefit everyone.